Chicago, part of the Democrats’ urban reign of terror

On Monday, the circus came to town. Democrats set up their big top in Chicago.

To the poet Carl Sandberg, Chicago was the City of the Big Shoulders. Under successive Democratic administrations, it has become the city of crime, poverty and despair.

The Windy City hasn’t had a Republican mayor in over 90 years. Since the 1960s, it has gone from the machine politics of Mayor Richard J. Daley to the loony liberalism of former Mayor Lori Lightfoot and current Mayor Brandon Johnson.

Under Ms. Lightfoot, homicides hit a 50-year high: 695 in 2022. She dismissed criticism of her administration as racist, even though most of those killed were black or brown.

After an incident last year, Mr. Johnson – an inveterate root-causer – said the hundreds of teens who looted a convenience store in the South Loop were “starved for opportunities” – not to mention candy, beer, cigarettes and anything else that was portable.

Like other cities over which they hold sway, in Chicago, Democrats respond to crime with indulgence, poverty with more social spending and business flight with taxes.

Chicago’s overall poverty rate is 17.2%. But on the South and West sides, it’s close to 50%.

Failing schools contribute to joblessness. In 2020, the Illinois Department of Education estimated that only 1 in 10 Chicago schools had students reading or doing math at grade level. Before he became mayor, Mr. Johnson was an organizer for the Chicago Teachers Union.

In the past decade, Chicago’s commercial property taxes have gone up 93%, giving it the nation’s second-highest effective tax rate. Office vacancies have reached an all-time high, and 33,000 former residents have left for greener pastures.

Mr. Johnson and his supporters are proposing a city income tax on those earning over $100,000 a year. For them, the answer to crime, poverty and failing schools is another burden on the struggling middle class.

Chicago is part of the Democrats’ urban reign of terror. Democrats have ruled and ruined New York, Los Angeles, Washington and Portland, Oregon.

Vice President Kamala Harris got her start in San Francisco, where she served as district attorney from 2004 to 2011. While she is now touting her credentials as a tough-on-crime prosecutor, in a 2020 interview, Ms. Harris said she didn’t see how putting more police on the streets made communities safer.

In her honor, Republicans have resurrected the venerable expression “San Francisco liberal.” Once known for its upscale shopping and dining, the city is now famous for its “poop maps,” provided to help pedestrians navigate the piles of human feces that dot its once-charming streets.

In July, the city unveiled a program that will pay addicts up to $100 a week not to use drugs. Unfortunately, we all pay for the Democrats’ habit of rewarding social pathologies and punishing normalcy.

The vice president’s running mate suffers from the same progressive psychosis.

During the 2020 George Floyd riots in Minneapolis, when over 1,500 businesses and other buildings were burned and looted (property damage was estimated at $500 million), Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz waited 18 hours after Mayor Jacob Frey pleaded for help to send in the National Guard.

Mr. Walz blamed the mostly peaceful protests on systemic racism and described police as an occupying army.

His wife opened the windows of the governor’s residence so she could enjoy the heady aroma of burning tires. “I kept the windows open as long as I could because I felt like that was such a touchstone of what was happening.”

Democrats thrill to the scent of social progress, while the price is paid by small-business owners, minorities who lose their livelihoods and residents who can no longer get prescriptions filled at the neighborhood drugstore that went up in flames.

Ms. Harris, who was then running for vice president, encouraged her supporters to donate to a fund “to help post bail for those protesting on the ground in Minnesota.” Thanks to her, wealthy Democrats in places like Nantucket, Massachusetts, could help put rioters back on the streets to do more damage.

The Democrats made our major cities the hell they have become, and the cities made the Democratic Party. In every state, their strongholds are the welfare plantations with legions of the low-information voters who are their prey.

In Chicago, you’ll laugh at the antics of Democratic politicians and thrill to the Harris-Walz trapeze act as they fly through the air and away from their records.

This column was first published at the Washington Times.

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